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Maartje

Introducing the first alpha release of Mastodon 3.11 for Workgroups!

Available for Windows 95 :BlobhajShock:

308 comments
Maartje

@dec_hl inspired by your work on a DOS client ❤️

Maartje

Q: is it open source?
A: mail me a floppy and I will get you the code

(Seriously this computer has no USB or anything so I will open source it once in better shape as getting the code out is a pain)

vga256

@maartje lemme know where to mail the floppy to. i'll even pre-format it!

Simon Springall (he/him). #FBPE

@maartje that's odd that you can access toots via Mastadon federation, but can't connect to GitHub or some mechanism to share the code? What protocols are required then to federate? I recall WfW had TCP/IP, just about.

Maartje

@simonspringall I sure could FTP it out.... Git well i would need a Git client (optionally SSH) so that will be harder... the code fits on one diskette so that is probably the fastest way.
I have ways to get it out but for it to sync....

Rob

@maartje As much as I love the silence of modern computers (well, except for GPU fans) I kinda miss the sounds of the whirs and clicks from the computers of yore.

Maartje

@Probably my dell work laptop has coil whine while it is a terrible fact that dell ships that in premium laptop it makes it sound like a computer

Rob

@maartje I guess some of those sounds are better than others 😅
At least the disk sounds give some expectation management - “hey I’m doing something! (Possibly constantly swapping, but something!)”

Maartje

@dug what people see as clippy is the Microsoft Agent API… it seems i have docs on it but the demo fails.. I only find ActiveX related docs…

Macrosoft agent demo page
vga256

@maartje do i detect the sweet scent of visual basic 6.x

i absolutely love this. i have an IBM EduQuest 486 SLC running 3.11 that demands satisfaction

me·ta·phil, der

@maartje congratulations, you're the first person in the world that made me spill my prosecco out of my nose 🎩 👈

vga256

@maartje !!! my first true love. my summer job boss (at an ISP when I was 15 years old) patiently taught me VB after work for the entire summer. to this day, after many languages and IDEs, i've never found a coding environment that I enjoyed as much.

Fixstern

@maartje @felsqualle is there a working tls/ssl library for win95? That would be rad to actually fully build that client like icq was (including the cheesy sound effects of that time). I am getting nostalgic 🙂

Maartje

@felsqualle @dunkelstern yes and no… there are brave people who ported modern curl and openssl or mtls to dos (with packet drivers) but not win 95 (I believe it can be done with non native dlls)… well as far as I can find. As I didn’t want to load a bunch of external code I use the IE based http handler that windows offered at the time. For TLS I host a WebOne proxy at home which does the encryption handling and converts it to http.

Maartje

@felsqualle @dunkelstern i do plan to make it more complete and once I have some ugly patched etc cleaned out I will put it on a diskette and put that in my laptop to upload it to GitHub

Fixstern

@maartje @felsqualle fascinating! I learned programming with gfabasic and vb3 (first thing to do: turn off syntax check or get bombarded with popup windows) then switched to vb6 and then to linux and went with C and C++ (which isn’t so nostalgic). I would love to see a vb program again 🙂 so please upload it if you feel comfortable with the state of things 🙂 would even help out with stuff if i remember. (If wanted)

Maartje

@felsqualle @dunkelstern there is some code in a reply i posted 😁
Help is welcome to build new features once I have it on GitHub ❤️

Mike Carlucci

@maartje I mean, it’s the most iconic version of Windows

Enjie

@maartje haven't heard the sound of a floppy disc for such a long time

Maartje

@enjie nothing better than an evening with hot chocolate, floppy noises, midi playing in the background, a shark next to you and Visual Basic 6

DukeBerlin

@maartje @enjie
Do you know then the #Geekchester ? If, not yet, you will #love it:
youtu.be/7S5IuaKiZIY

An #orchestra comprising
- 16 floppy disks 3,5‘‘ 💾
- 3 flatbed scanner
- 2 hard drives
- 2 dot matrix printer
- many more old school devices
- and the famous 1990s German band #FettesBrot

Enjoy!

@maartje @enjie
Do you know then the #Geekchester ? If, not yet, you will #love it:
youtu.be/7S5IuaKiZIY

An #orchestra comprising
- 16 floppy disks 3,5‘‘ 💾
- 3 flatbed scanner
- 2 hard drives
- 2 dot matrix printer
- many more old school devices
- and the famous 1990s German band #FettesBrot

Enjie

@DukeBerlin @maartje yea, thats really great. I also like this guy with his Commodordion: youtu.be/EBCYvoC4muc

Bruce Heerssen

@maartje LOL, I love it! You clearly do not have enough free time on your hands.

Maartje

@bruce sadly I wanted to do this for a longer time but tonight I finally dedicated some time to it… started after lunch finished around 23:00 with a working alpha

Daniele

@maartje That's really a blast from the past! VB6, floppies and I'm SURE I had that monitor back in the 90s

andreas

@maartje this is awesome 😂 send it to LGR 😊

villes

@maartje
Wow. Just wow. Also made me snicker.

Maartje

@gkorn unfortunately the JSON parser is already slow on a Pentium 1… (probably slow code….) I would love to see somebody try 😁

Maartje

@salyavin @cybette don’t think VB6 apps support 16-bit Windows systems… OS/2 only has backwards compatibility for 16 bit

T.O.M.

@maartje OK, it's done. 2022 will be a major breakthrough for mastodon now!!!1!1!!!

Dr Richard Ramyar :idle:

@maartje

No!???!

Wow

I thought it was a joke at first! 💾

Maartje

@richard4444 It actually works... next I hope to make sending toots work

Herb 💙 🌿🍄

@maartje Fab, nostalgic memories of my first PC IBM PS/2 👍🙂

Mark Bradley

@maartje mastodon overall has a great old school vibe to it. I like it.

Athena L.M.

@maartje when I said I wanted native clients this isn't what I meant but thank you so very much

Andr01d :mastodon:

@maartje this is the coolest thing I've ever seen in social media #mastodon

Tweb

@maartje finnaly, what we’ve all been waiting for

A:\kiteless.exe /BLM

@maartje This is amaaaaaazing! I need to get my Dial Up Networking server working again just for this... and other fun of course. Tempted to mail you a floppy. Super cool.

Maartje

@kiteless I need to see how it behaves on dial up... need to try it on my WIn98 laptop once the code works a bit better. It should give a normal notice as it used IE as HTTP driver...
It will be on GitHub soon 😄

GhostlyEmma :therian:​

@maartje oh my god i gotta try that on my nt4 86box machine

Matthieu

@maartje

@theadvancegirl

Ça c'est de l'informatique de vieux comme on aime !

VinceD

@maartje That’s what I call a clean and tidy UI.

Maartje

@vncd Needs more icons.... need to get me one of those 999 icons CDs

Andrew Williams

@maartje Oh Visual Basic, that brings back some memories.

Gérard

@maartje Fabulous! Does it work on Windows 3.11 too?

Maartje

@effy @Foone I sure take a lot of inspiration from them ❤️

Maartje

@Paulmd199 PRs welcome... I am not that good in VB6 and honestly do't plan to be that good 😅

Maartje

@haayman @Gerwin030 gewoon een stuk of 100 lijnen Visual Basic 🤓

Maartje

@Gerwin030 @haayman (kijkt links naar de levende 386 laptop met win 3.11, de win98 laptop, de win xp desktop,...)

Arjen Haayman

@maartje @Gerwin030 hahaha. Ik probeer me nu voor te stellen welke computers ik allemaal gehad heb. Sommige waren best groot. No way dat ik die allemaal mocht houden

Maartje

@haayman @Gerwin030 Ik heb ook een klein museumpje hier maar ze krijgen allemaal liefde :blobhaj_hug:

Arjen Haayman

@maartje @Gerwin030 die eerste keer dat ik een harde schijf had met 200MB! Niets dan liefde

Matthew M :risc_os_verified:

@maartje - This is super cool that you made a dedicated era-appropiate application for Mastodon!

But what I think is EVEN cooler is your capital choice in monitor! I use to use the smaller Phillips 107e montior and I loved the design of it and it's distinct bass-y deglossing sound when you turn it on. Brilliant little CRT way back when! 🙂​

Maartje

@MMusselwhite got this one from a student on the hunt for a decent CRT 😊 It is a lovely one I only cannot figure out the use of phillips ligtframe....

Richard Troupe

@maartje This is amazing! I can't wait to see more Mastodon clients for retro hardware!

Richard Troupe

@maartje @dec_hl Wow! That looks great too! I'm holding out for an Amiga and PowerPC Mac client as well. 😂

Richard Troupe

@maartje @dec_hl if you can make it work on Mac OS 8 & 9, I would forever be in your debt. 😂

SuperIlu

@richardtroupe @maartje there was a Python based client for classic MacOS in my timeline some days ago…

Joris (DWizzy) :unverified:

@maartje wonderful, thanks for making me smile :)
Are 'token' and 'instance' files txt? I feel they should be .ini

Maartje

@Joris quick hacks.... i only spent a few hours on this including learning VB6

Jumar Macato

@maartje folks porting mastodon clients to retro stuff is not going to get old for me (pun intended :P)

Tom Raftery

@maartje Lol, I love this 👍🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Ronald

@maartje Wow, nice! The loose sticker on the floppy disc brings back memories about a disc getting stuck in the drive... 🥴

Maartje

@Ronald those stickers refuse to stick it annoys me… what made the original ones stick so well 😢

Maartje

@Tattie you noticed :blobhaj:
Many of my software suggests that 😅

ben

@maartje How'd you get a recent version of TLS working?

UkeBLCatboy

@maartje I love this 😂 so pointless yet so funny and cool 😎

Simon

@maartje What a great project. I haven't heard that disk drive click for years!!

Pete Orrall

@maartje Will this work on other vintage Windows OSes? Namely NT 3.51 and NT4?

Gòrd

@maartje A glorious endeavour! Would love to play with this once released.

FantasmitaAsex :heart_ace:

@maartje Now we need a Mastodon client for ZX Spectrum

Maggie

@maartje glad to see some old version of Visual Basic is still useful

Manu

@maartje Cool!

My guess is though, that we won't see widespread adoption of Mastodon until we have a client for PalmOS and a "Print Toot" Button. :(

Jonathan ‘theJPster’ Pallant

@maartje but … what are you going to call it if you need to put out a patch release?

🥶

@maartje is the source available anywhere? I might wanna port this shit to my Dreamcast eventually lol

Maartje

Tested the installer on Windows 98

Login screen asking for instance and token
Loaded timeline and Windows 98 winver screen
Classic windows installer with title Mastodon 3.11 for workgroups
R. L. Dane :debian: :openbsd:

@maartje

That is AMAZING.

I honestly can't remember the last time I used a floppy drive that wasn't attached via USB.

At least nine or ten years; longer if you don't count work.
Pretty sure I stopped using any home computer with a built-in floppy drive in 2008.

Also (just curious), why is Blåhaj such a big meme? It's suddenly everywhere. It's a stuffed shark! 😂

Spring Breakdown :jo:

@maartje This is awesome, but also, the looseness of that label worries me. :oh_no:

Saddler’s Husband

@maartje I’d love to try this out on my Win95 comp!!!

ADignorantium

@maartje Ahhh, the sound of a disk drive is music to my ears. What's missing is the screech of a modem connecting at a whopping 33kbps! 😎

Matt :idic: 🌌

@maartje 😆 is Mastodon going to replace Doom as the thing that runs on everything just because we can?

Wyatt Neal

@maartje now this is the kind of #tech posting I'm here for!

elliot :brennans:

@maartje this floppy and hard disk noise is giving me anxiety. Those were not good times.

XtoF

@maartje So does it require win95 and cannot run on a 16-bit windows, as the name could suggest?

Anyway, that very nice! 🙂

DavidDGTNT

@maartje Running this over dial-up emulation, actual dial-up, or ethernet, or heck, even Wi-fi?

:afire: palingenetic man :afire:
@maartje Written in VB6, as most programs written during that era were.
HATE_NOT_HOPE
@maartje Bloody show off - look every one I have a DvD-r drive - in my 486dx66
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